Not Just For A Rhyme...it's Historical Context Time!

Not just for a rhyme...it's historical context time!

So it's obvious that with the phrase "here's the sugar on the cream" alastor means to say that "here's the best bit" but why use that phrase exactly?

Well fun fact about desserts of the past: they were far less sweet. Now that may seem obvious everything is really sugared up now, but sometimes there would not be sugar cooked or baked into the dish but added afterwards as a topping, particularly with puddings.

A lot of puddings at the time were much more savory and very starchy. Before the invention of gelatin you needed all that starchiness to create that firm pudding texture, especially if you didn't have eggs (if you did it would be a custard, not a pudding), so sugar was added later as a topping, usually with pure cream to make sure you could distribute the sugar evenly. Even though jello was a thing in the 1920s, this was still a very common practice for making puddings, so much so that the tapioca pudding on Ellis island given to immigrants if they stayed overnight was served this way through the mid twenties. So sugar on the cream is literally a historical example talking about the part of something that makes it "the best" even if its not a common turn of phrase. Its not just a substitute to "here's the icing on the cake" or "here's the cherry on top" to make it rhyme with team. Its an actual old fashioned idea relevant to alastor's childhood. Dude probably ate a lot of puddings served this way growing up until gelatin became popular for puddings.